Hello Mom!

Hello Mom! might not be a dance-music crossover on the level of, say, Röyksopp albums; it might not even be a crossover on the level of Mylo's or Vitalic's, but it's still impressive enough to entertain folks well outside its core audience-- German electro-tech geekery not entirely required. "Impressive" isn't even the word: There's hardly a minute on this record that doesn't keep turning out to be way more fun than the last time you heard it.

The album comes from Ellen Allien's Bpitch Control, a label whose artists tend to skirt the lines between dancefloor function and home-listening quirk: Even when they aspire to get you deep and sweaty on your nights out, there's something grainy and queasy about it, a kind of twitchy brutalism that reminds you of the person behind the machines. The sounds here that really hit the body-- say, the face-punching blurts on "Kill Bill Vol. 4"-- stay just as tweaked-out lovable at home. And for every one of them, there's a dozen that are just squishy and colorful and even more fun: Check the back-flipping bass lines on "Die Clubnummer", which sound more like dorky robots acting out Three Stooges routines. "Dancingbox" cuts up French rhyming into a granular stutter over tweaks that are active and constant without ever crossing over to hyperactive or gratuitous. "Silicon" does the same with Sasha Perera's vocals, for one of the best results here-- it's almost as if it were made as a demonstration of How to Improve M.I.A.

The front and back ends of this album are full of treats like that-- circus-trick edits, ultra-modern production, and pure sonic candy. What really makes the record worth it, though, is the way it holds up through its more atmospheric center. This stuff slows down nicely, coasting through a few soft electro grooves, pulling off "thoughtful" tones like Orbital, and even sliding into some clattery dub. The constant hi-fi tweaks and switchbacks might tread close to distraction-- or just empty calories-- but there's an ear for melody and movement that seems to keep them from ever drifting too far off.

So what's scaling back on its crossover potential? Well, the fact remains that it's a technical record. There's emotion (see "I Love You"), but it's not an emotional package; there's pop, but it's not a human pop album. You get what you'd expect from tracks with names like "Tetrispack"-- tweaky computer-age fun, thrilling sound, jittery details, robotic rhythmic switchbacks. Albums like this don't hit so many people with deep bonding experiences; they don't wind up on desert island lists. The good news is that we don't live on a desert island, and this album stands a great chance of enlivening a lot of your days here in the non-hypothetical world. At its best, strangely enough, it's a dance imperative free of those deep, dark depths-- and packed with a shiny, geeked-out joy that keeps you cartoon-dancing beside the speaker.